Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

The past week has been swamped with unexpected stress: we are trying to buy a house! And whilst I knew that the house-buying process is not easy, I had not fully grasped just how many bureaucratic hoops have to be jumped through to get to the end goal. Time and energy is wasted spent attempting to get hard-copy bank statements (because internet print outs aren’t accepted), sorting ID details (only to find they are incorrect and have to be changed), getting our trading accounts in order and generally worrying about money.

It’s horrible and therefore is very good yoga practice. I try to remind myself that bureaucracy is what it is and can not be changed…and that if the purchase doesn’t happen, we haven’t actually lost anything (apart from initial legal fees but I’ll gloss over that), so no point getting stressed. This is of course much easier said than done and so I have taken to writing motivational messages on the fridge.

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Note to self…

Amidst all this nonsense I am suddenly very busy with work and Matt’s preparing to move his business to a new workshop. It’s good at these times to focus on some very normal, everyday, grounding activities. What can be more grounding than a spud? Or – better – a bag of spuds?

My Dad always manages to come up trumps when it comes for goodies for the allotment. This week he produced a net of seed potatoes, all ready for chitting. For the uninitiated, potatoes have to be chitted before they get planted out; all this means is that you leave them out in the daylight so the shoots can grow. I’ve been saving egg boxes for just this purpose and emptied said spuds into them this morning. They are now laid out on the spare bed so they can start doing their business.

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Let’s get on with normal business. Potatoes are laid out for chitting…

These are Charlotte potatoes and should be ready for planting out in a few weeks, for a crop mid-summer. They lasted less than a minute in their new home before getting a nosey visitor.

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…but how long will they last?